Two Michigan State University evolutionary biologists offer new evidence that evolution doesn’t favor the selfish, disproving a theory popularized in 2012.

“We found evolution will punish you if you’re selfish and mean,” said lead author Christoph Adami, MSU professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. “For a short time and against a specific set of opponents, some selfish organisms may come out ahead. But selfishness isn’t evolutionarily sustainable.”

The paper appears in the current issue of Nature Communications and focuses on game theory, which is used in biology, economics, political science and other disciplines. Much of the last 30 years of research has focused on how cooperation came to be, since it’s found in many forms of life, from single-cell organisms to people.

In 2012, a scientific paper unveiled a newly discovered strategy – called zero-determinant – that gave selfish players a guaranteed way to beat cooperative players.

“The paper caused quite a stir,” said Adami, who co-authored the paper with Arend Hintze, molecular and microbiology research associate. “The main result appeared to be completely new, despite 30 years of intense research in this area.”

Adami and Hintze had their doubts about whether following a zero determinant strategy (ZD) would essentially eliminate cooperation and create a world full of selfish beings. So they used high-powered computing to run hundreds of thousands of games and found ZD strategies can never be the product of evolution. While ZD strategies offer advantages when they’re used against non-ZD opponents, they don’t work well against other ZD opponents.

“In an evolutionary setting, with populations of strategies, you need extra information to distinguish each other,” Adami said.

So ZD strategies only worked if players knew who their opponents were and adapted their strategies accordingly. A ZD player would play one way against another ZD player and a different way against a cooperative player.

“The only way ZD strategists could survive would be if they could recognize their opponents,” Hintze said. “And even if ZD strategists kept winning so that only ZD strategists were left, in the long run they would have to evolve away from being ZD and become more cooperative. So they wouldn’t be ZD strategists anymore.”

http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2013/evolution-will-punish-you-if-youre-selfish-and-mean/

Looking up “zero determinant strategy” I found the piece below. I haven’t had time to read it (it’s quite long), but it looks like it’s worth reading.

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2012/07/zerodeterminant_strategies_in.html

Initial response to the OP was that this seemed to be a classic and extreme case of either-orism, but I’d probably better read some more before dismissing it.

This looks like a reasonable statement of the claims that the paper quoted in the OP claims to have refuted:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428920/the-emerging-revolution-in-game-theory/

Further comment (still without having read the background).

The history of the past 10,000 years or so provides overwhelming evidence that for a social species capable of high level communication the optimum strategies are:

- Within your group either: Those with unexceptional abilities cooperate, follow the rules, and make the most of whatever opportunities come your way Those with exceptional abilities, pretend to follow the rules, but manipulate all opportunities to your own advantage, without concern for others
- For interacting with competing local groups, use whatever methods are most successful to incorporate the other group within your group.

Any computer simulation that comes up with different results has obviously got it wrong.

>pretend to follow the rules

Yes but if selfish individuals have to pretend to follow the rules in order to get their way, this in itself indicates that natural selection has strongly favoured co-operation.

Bubblecar said:

>pretend to follow the rules

Yes but if selfish individuals have to pretend to follow the rules in order to get their way, this in itself indicates that natural selection has strongly favoured co-operation.

I wasn’t suggesting otherwise :)

‘Minding your own business’ serves group and individual interests, helping others is more on a necessity basis, and often ‘help that can be extended’ if really required is more important than being ‘over-helpful’.

Based on this generalized tendency, what is selfishness and what is more altruistic behaviour is quite a complex thing, probably defying monistic perspectives regarding motivation.

A lot of people tend to see sociability as being something altogether different to minding your own business, but in truth 98% of the social involves discrimination and discernment and active limiting of the where whens and whos, so really much of the social is a private thing, selfish for sure, but then a discriminating social human being has to be selfish.

Culture and society even have ethics to limit the impositions of group expectations on any individual, that equalize the power.

Unless the individual is a threat to its species, then the internal squabbles and one upmanship is not overly important. What is important is the cooperation between individuals within a species when confronted by an outside threat or catastrophe.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Any computer simulation that comes up with different results has obviously got it wrong.

perhaps because life isn’t exactly like an iterated prisoner’s dilemma game.

Evolution Punishes Selfishness

evolution rewards the parasite

Soso said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Any computer simulation that comes up with different results has obviously got it wrong.

perhaps because life isn’t exactly like an iterated prisoner’s dilemma game.

Yes, in fact life is nothing like an iterated prisoner’s dilemma game.

In an IPD game you have clearly defined contestants and a clearly defined winner (whoever ends up with the most money). In an Evolutionary Life Game you have multi-level teams (genes, individuals, tribal groups, species, etc) and the lowest level (the genes), which is the level that decides the winner (whichever gene ends up with the most copies of itself, wins) is split over multiple individuals, and as the game progresses will be split over multiple tribal groups, and even species.

This multi-level aspect is an essential element in determining the outcome of the Game of Life, but it is not modelled in the IPD game at all.

The most enjoyable game of monopoly I’ve played was so friendly everyone was cheating like mad, but it was friendly cheating and was hilarious.

Riff-in-Thyme said:

The most enjoyable game of monopoly I’ve played was so friendly everyone was cheating like mad, but it was friendly cheating and was hilarious.

Friendly (or not so friendly) cheating within a game with very specific rules is an important aspect of evolution in many species.